Progeny Chess Preview

Two days of development left for PROGENY CHESS! Here's a breakdown of the rules. The main gameplay mechanics have stayed mostly the same:

• All of the original pieces are there (pawn, king, queen, rook, etc) and move in the same way as they do in standard chess.
• Like normal chess, the goal is to take out the enemy king. Unlike normal chess, Progeny Chess does not have a "check" or "check mate" system. Instead, you must simply kill the enemy king. This adds some additional focus requirements from both players; if they don't realize their king is in trouble, there is nothing shouting at them to get the king to safety.

However, each chess piece has additional abilities beyond its ordinary movement/attack abilities. Using one of these abilities uses up your turn.

• Trooper / Pwn-Bot (Pawn): Can self-destruct to destroy both itself and the piece immediately in front of it.
• Captain / Commander (King): Can deploy a pawn to the space immediately in front of it. This ability has a 10-turn cooldown.
• Guard / Blocker (Knight): Can drop a Barrier onto any open space within one square of itself. A barrier blocks that space and lasts for 8 turns. Only knights can jump over barriers (just as they can jump over other pieces in traditional chess). Neither friendly nor hostile pieces can pass through a Barrier.
• Engineer / Scout (Bishop): Can drop a Smoke Bomb onto any open space or onto any enemy within one square of itself. Any enemy under the smoke cannot be selected by their commander, effectively disabling that enemy while the smoke lasts. Smoke bombs last for 6 turns, and do not negatively affect friendly targets.
• Sweeper /Dozer (Queen): Can destroy all Smoke Bombs and Barriers within one space of itself.
• Beardman / Grinder (Rook): Can trade places with any one of your pawns anywhere on the board. This ability cannot be used on your opponent's back row.

As you can imagine, these additions provide for some very interesting strategic opportunities and a lot more depth than traditional chess.

I'm able to successfully set up a LAN connection for the game, but am still working on getting online play to work. Hopefully I can get that all hammered out within the next two days. Check back Friday night for the final version!

(PC Only for now; though I plan on getting it out for iPhone and iPad early next year.)